David Payne’s first two plays about C. S. Lewis are now supplemented by “Target Practice.” Here is an excerpt from his advertising. [Note: Payne thinks the Screwtape Letters idea came to Lewis on 30 July 1940. But it came on 21 July, eight days before Hitler’s persuasive 29 July broadcast.] World War II was raging. Hitler was on the shores Read More ›
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader C. S. Lewis described Harold and Alberta Scrubb, Eustace’s parents, as vegetarians, non-smokers, and teetotallers — who wore a special kind of underclothes. Fifty years later, readers are familiar with vegetarians, non-smokers, and teetotallers, but most are mystified by Lewis’s reference to a special kind of underclothes. Strict Mormons are teetotallers and non-smokers Read More ›
Since writing “The Dark Tower: A Challenge to Lewis Scholars” (Legacy 84), I’ve noticed a few more echoes of That Hideous Strength in The Dark Tower. In That Hideous Strength, Mark Studdock is imprisoned in a room that is covered, wherever he looks, with decorations not explicitly demonic but having a subtle cumulative effect that is dehumanizing (ch. 13). According Read More ›
Conference in Milan: “Clive Staples Lewis critico della Modernita.” On Saturday, December 11, 1999 the first Italian C. S. Lewis conference took place. Most of the speakers were Italian, but there were two from Oxford: Andrew Paul Cuneo, President of Oxford University Lewis Society, spoke on “The Principle of Hierarchy in C.S. Lewis,” and Walter Hooper gave the keynote address, Read More ›
BOOKS BY LEGACY READERS The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers (Del Rey, paperback reissue, 1999). This historical fantasy set in 16th century Europe draws on the legend of the Fisher King. First published in 1979 it has been translated into French, Czech, Italian, and Polish. Declare by Tim Powers will be released this year by Avon, but 26 Read More ›
Lewis’s view of Purgatory was similar to Dante’s. Kathryn Lindskoog writes: “The analogy that works best for me is arriving at a festive dinner party in dripping wet raincoat and muddy galoshes. Instead of joining the other guests in the reception room that way, we strip off our outer wraps in the vestibule and then join the party. How long Read More ›
According to a very popular e-mail, from 1558 to 1829 Catholics in England were not allowed to practice their faith in public or private. It was illegal to be Catholic, upon penalty of death. So Catholics wrote “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to secretly teach their children the basics of the Christian faith. Since the song sounded like rhyming nonsense, Read More ›
In 1997 a management consultant held a seminar for executives of Logitech International, the world’s largest producer of computer mice. He led the attentive group through a session of brainstorming and sharing in order to improve their mission statement, which was simply “to provide Logitech with profitable growth and related new business areas.” The improved statement that they produced with Read More ›
In an article titled “The Joy of Sets” in the October 1998 issue of Lingua Franca, Jim Holt began “Why is it that French theory so often ends up having a baneful effect on American pedagogy? I am thinking not of Derrida, but of another figure, one whose influence reached these shores long before him: Nicolas Bourbaki.” “In 1939 he Read More ›
Information from a 1999 copyrighted interview by John Berlyne. Authors Tim Powers and James Blaylock met as students at California State University at Fullerton in the 1970s. At that time the school paper was publishing lots of student poetry — in Powers’s words, “all free-verse, unpunctuated, unrhymed hippie drivel. Very pretentious though.” So Powers and Blaylock decided to write a Read More ›